Saints Row: Galvanized
by HeartWritingM
Summary: The Zin Empire has attacked the Saints and taken everything from Ljubica. But in their attempt to demoralize, she was galvanized, and resolved to get her revenge upon Zinyak after he took something precious and irreplaceable to her.


AN: I swore up and down long ago I would never dignify SR4 in the Ljuniverse. And then I played it, and ideas started happening, and… and… I'm sorry. But I hope anyone reading it enjoy it :D I wrote up a little intro to 'catch up' on my Boss' universe and the goings on. I never did finish Redemption before SR4 came out, but I figured out how to tie in to canon all neat-like. Anyway, without further ago...

Ch 01 - Release

_The United States of America had never faced an enemy such as the Saints. Truly, when the government took Johnny Gat from their leader, the war she waged on them had known no equal since the original American Revolution. Despite her efforts to return to her roots, the popularity of the Saints had remained, and so when she called to the American people to stand up and cast off the shackles of their 'Capitalist Pig government', she'd assembled an army like no other ever fielded in battle. It still took her years of fighting against what was arguably the strongest military in the world at the time, but even some of their own betrayed to the banner of the Fleur-De-Lis in what became known as the Saints Revolution, and in the end, when she finally marched on the White House, she took everything away from a nation that had not known such defeat since it's inception over two centuries ago._

_And yet, she never did find Johnny Gat. He'd been hidden away some place so that not even Kinzie Kensington could find him. And so the most powerful woman in the free world was left with an empty, hollow victory. She crowned herself Tzaritsa; there would be no voting her out of office. She carefully selected her inner circle from among her most trusted Lieutenants, but appointed the famed and acclaimed actor Keith David as her second in command, much to the protests of Pierce Washington. She even found an ally in a man from her past, one Benjamin 'Motherfucking' King, whom she appointed her Chief of Staff._

_And the country prospered under the rule of the Saints, despite what many would have believed. Anarchy did not rule as most would expect, and the nation retained it's identity under the banner of purple. She had taken away democracy, but left freedom largely intact, and that seemed enough for the American people._

_But then the Zin Empire attacked. Indeed, the Saints fought valiantly, but the alien invaders proved too technologically powerful and took them captive with relative ease. But Kinzie was too wily for even the mind-breaking simulations the Zin used to trap their prisoners. Determining something was dreadfully wrong she freed herself, soon releasing Keith David as well, and together they found their leader, freeing her from the prison of her mind and worst nightmares; a period of hellish torment in her life she'd thought long behind her._

_And that, reader, is where our story begins. In a dark, terrible chamber in the depths of the Zin mothership, where the most feared woman in all of human history has just been released from her imprisonment._

#

Ljubica fell onto the cold, metal floor and collapsed to her hands and knees, naked and covered in a thick, sticky, reddish ooze. She coughed violently, expelling the stuff from her lungs and retching. She shook her head to clear the images from her mind, the faces of men long dead, men she'd killed for the terrible wrongs they'd done to her, and who could never hurt her again.

She reached up to touch the scars on her face, making sure there was actually no blood. She shuddered to remember all those years ago when someone had decided to play connect the dots with the freckles on her face.

"Fuck and shit," she groaned. Exhaling slowly, chasing away the last of her demons, she forced herself to stand, stumbling forward against the fog in her mind.

"Kinzie?" she asked, hoping for an answer as she staggered towards a doorway ahead of her. "Kinzie? I am feeling like toilet in gulag…"

The large metal door ahead of her split across the middle, pieces sliding into the ceiling and floor as it opened, and she made her way through. It led into a hallway full of metal crates and boxes, dimly lit with greenish lights. Just inside, she doubled over and vomited, the effects of exiting the pod unauthorized leaving her disoriented and violently nauseous.

As she forced herself upright again, struggling onward, she only had one thought. "I am needing to be getting to that platform…"

She tripped over her feet, losing her footing and falling against the wall to the right for support. Grunting, she forced herself along, one foot after the other, and partially dragging herself with her arms. She threw up again, her stomach mostly empty except for the bile that splashed down around her feet, and her head pounded.

When her stomach settled, she pushed off from the wall, managing a few steps before swerving back into it, wincing as she willed herself to not be sick again. "Wh-where… where's Kinzie…?"

Dimly, she saw some sort of control pad on a panel ahead of her, and she stumbled towards it, blinking and squinting to try and clear her vision. She reached out to it, her fingers brushing over the buttons. One of them opened the door next to it. It split down the middle, opening to either side, and a hulking, vaguely humanoid alien sparsely covered in spines and wearing in a baldric was behind it. In it's hands was a large, high tech rifle that appeared to have three barrels in an inverted triangle configuration.

"Fuck and shit," she breathed, with feeling, as it turned and raised the butt of it's rifle.

"Hey! What are you doing!" it bellowed, rushing to crack her over the face with it's weapon. Ljubica managed to side step, blocking with her forearms.

"Give me that," she growled, wresting the rifle away from him and decking him with her free hand. She found the it's trigger, squeezing off a shot that crumpled the alien to the ground, and she fell back against the wall as her adrenalin rush faded. She took a few moments, shaking her head again, and finally she could think a little better. She took a few steps, slowly, feeling the strength and equilibrium returning to her body. Warily, she crept through the doorway into the next hall.

"Where in hell am I?" she grumbled, looking around. There was another doorway, some boxes she could use for cover, and a tall flight of stairs. Kinzie had told her to get to a landing platform, so she reasoned that was up, and headed for the stairs.

Before reaching the top, she heard two deep, decidedly male voices having a conversation, and she stopped, waiting for a good time to strike. She briefly pondered why they were speaking English.

"I swear, every time I come home it's all 'What'd you bring me? How come I never get to go on any raids…?" one of them whined.

The other, more gravelly, added it's own side. "I got the same problem, I never get to just sit down and relax without being pestered by the miss-…"

She stepped up into view with the rifle at her shoulder, shooting into last one and cutting off his voice with a pained cry as he fell to the metal floor.

"Hey! There's a human!" his partner cried, raising his own weapon, but Ljubica cut him down before he could fire.

Another Zin rushed in from a hallway, and she fired several times at him before hitting home and sending him tumbling to the ground.

A deep, rough-edged voice boomed over the intercom. '_Emperor Zinyak reminds soldiers to report any and all misplaced or mishandled abductees immediately.'_

As she turned the corner, two more Zin confronted her, and she took one down before ducking behind the wall for cover. When he stopped firing, she popped out and shoot him in the head, the laser rifle's beams of coherent light cauterizing the horrible wound to the alien's face as it fell like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

Ljubica ran on, feeling invigorated by the fighting, almost like her old self. "I hope you are coming, Kinzie. For _both_ our sakes."

She saw a large window ahead, and considered smashing it, but she wasn't so sure that was a good idea. "Is this being… spaceship? What in hells…"

Frustrated, she ran back the way she'd came, and in a side hall saw another door. She ran up to and it slid open for her, revealing another hallway, this one full of the monstrous Zin. She started firing immediately, taking out two of them in the first barrage before ducking behind a box for cover, their return fire impacting on the top of the crate.

She popped up over the cover, using it to stabilize her aim, and started firing into the remaining Zin, as the voice from earlier boomed over the intercom again. '_Given the high volume of abductees, we are experiencing unusual delays in processing pod chambers three through eight. Your patience is appreciated.'_

Ljubica jogged down the hall, rifle on her shoulder. She climbed another flight of stairs, squeezing the trigger of her 'borrowed' weapon as she reached the top, another Zin falling before her. That alien voice again boomed from the loudspeakers.

'_All soldiers on high alert. Abductees are notorious for ill-fated escape attempts. Permission is granted to shoot on sight.'_

She ran through the next door, finally out in an open area. If this _was_ a spacecraft, it had a large interior area.

"Where is this fucking platform being at?" Ljubica growled, as that voice yet again rumbled from the loudspeakers.

'_Abductees carry a number of serious diseases. Exercise caution when approaching or handling abductees.'_

She killed another Zin that tried to shoot her from the cover of boxes, rushing through the door behind it and into two more . She cracked the butt of her rifle into one's face, knocking him down, and then turned to kill his partner before stepping n his chest and shooting him in the face. She was back into an interior room, running around a railing and over a small platform, killing another alien that got in her way.

'_A reminder that Emperor Zinyak will oversee the Celebratory Execution of World Leaders tonight in the main ballroom. Attendance is mandatory…'_

Another door led her back outside, and onto a long platform. She could see that it ended, and hope surged through her. This had to be where Kinzie said to meet, though she didn't see the redhead anywhere, or any means of escape. But she was forced to worry about that later, shooting more Zin that were there behind cover, sticking out too much of their large craniums and giving her easy targets.

She reached the end, looking around and still not seeing anything. "Fuck and shit, Kinzie I am really starting to be worrying about you…"

As she turned around, the door she'd used to get here opened, and countless Zin were rushing out of it.

"Am I at wrong… fuck my life," she growled, firing again and again, trying to pick her shots with care, but failing amidst the sheer number of enemies. Even if she missed, another was hit anyway, and she grit her teeth as she slowly backed away, laser bolts from her rifle killing alien after alien.

"Tell Zinyak I am ripping off his head and shitting down his neck," she growled darkly.

She started getting frustrated as more aliens poured out onto the platform, faster than she could kill them, and Kinzie's lack of appearance wasn't helping her anger at all.

"Don't be worrying," she grumbled mockingly. "I'll be there, blah blah _fuck!"_

The battled raged on, and she ducked behind a crate long enough for her weapon to cool before shooting the enemy again in earnest.

"If I am killing enough of you," she called, taking out another Zin with two shots to the chest. "I will be building bridge back to fucking earth!"

"Be coming at me, bro!" she shouted, letting loose into her fury. "I'll be killing every fucking one of you!"

As she ducked behind another box, a snide, condescending voice emanated from the speakers. '_Ahem. Is this thing on… can they hear me?'_

Ljubica ignored it as she fought on, rifle in her hands spitting out triple beams of coherent light at her enemies.

'_Well _hello._ I see you're attempting a noble escape… Understandable given your current situation, but I urge you to turn back.'_

Ljubica ducked back behind a crate, the rifle dying in her hands. She fussed with it for a moment before throwing it away with disgust. She tried desperately to think of something. She'd have to wait for them to get close, wrest another weapon from one of them; she had to do something. Simply laying down and giving up didn't even occur to her.

As she started to creep around the edge of the cover, a large vessel flew up into view, engines flaring as it stabilized. Kinzie's voice echoed from it's external speakers.

'_Boss!' _she cried. '_Stay down!'_

It was the sweetest music to her ears that Ljubica could hear just then. Cannons mounted near the nose unleashed a torrent of laser fire into the Zin army amassing behind her, explosions ripping over the platform and sending alien soldiers falling to their deaths. The ship rotated on it's axis, spinning the rear around, and she saw the rear door was hanging open. Keith David, her second-in-command, was standing in it, dressed in a grey jumpsuit and wielding a laser rifle on full auto with extreme prejudice.

Ljubica didn't wait, getting up and running for the edge of the platform. She leapt out into space, arms outstretched as she reached for the ship, but she realized she wasn't going to make it. She'd ran and jumped as hard as she could, but it was just too far.

There was nothing she could do, now, but just accept her fate.

Keith threw his rifle down and dove forward, reaching out and clasping his hand onto her forearm, and she instinctively did the same, swinging to a stop and dangling in his grip for a moment.

"I knew I was picking right man for job," she breathed as he started hauling her up into the ship, laser bolts hitting the hull around them.

"Damn right," he agreed, pulling her onto the ramp and helping her to her feet. He picked up the rifle and covered their escape into the bowels of the vessel, the door raising and shutting behind them.

"You okay?" he asked, looking her over. "Want some clothes?"

"Im fine," Ljubica told him, but shook her head. "Escape is more important, comrade."

Keith nodded. "Follow me."

#

As Kinzie dove down and twisted through an access tunnel, Ljubica and Keith rushed through the ship towards the bridge. It was a utilitarian vessel, all grid-work and metal rails, but the bridge did have an array of computer terminals and chairs.

Ljubica rushed up to the hacker, also dressed in a gray jumpsuit, yet somehow still having a purple hoody and fingerless gloves to put on beneath it. "Be letting me take stick, Kinzie. I'm getting us fucking out of here."

Kinzie clasped her hands together out in front of her, turning to the side, tone mockingly Russian when she spoke and rocking her head to the side. "Gee Kinzie, thanks for be saving my life."

Then she turned the other way and clasped her hands to her chest, resuming her usual tone of voice. "Why thanks, Boss, I love being appreciated."

Ljubica huffed when the redhead turned again, putting her hands on her hips. "Boss? I am Tzaritsa, now!"

The leader of the Saints finally felt chagrined, eyes softening, when Kinzie kept going, shrugging her shoulders. "When did you turn into such a jerk?"

"Surprise, Kinzie, I've always been _mudak!"_ the hacker finally finished, turning to face the Russian woman.

Ljubica looked up at her, touching the woman's shoulder gently. "Thank you, comrade. I am meaning it…"

"…You're not wearing pants," Kinzie retorted, and Ljubica jerked her hand back like she'd been burned.

"This just got weird…" Ljubica mumbled.

"Little bit," Kinzie agreed, nodding.

"Can I be flying, now?"

"Knock yourself out."

Ljubica sat down at the controls, quickly familiarizing herself with them as Keith came onto the bridge. As she wove her way through the depths of the Zin mothership, a thought came to her.

"Whoa, be waiting one minute," she said to Kinzie. "You were saving Keith David before me?"

Kinzie looked embarrassed. "I, uh, passed by him on the way out…?"

"Want to be telling me how _you_ got out?" Ljubica asked.

"Let's just focus on flying, shall we?" Keith interjected.

Ljubica shrugged, hand steady at the controls. "Okay, _fine_. Kinzie, is this thing having radio?"

Kinzie looked exasperated. "Radio signals bounce around space for-…"

Ljubica found a button on the console that looked like a speaker, and pressed it. It picked up something immediately, and she grinned as a bouncy synth line started.

"Oh my God, yes!" she cried. "This is fucking awesome!"

'_What is love… oh baby don't hurt me… don't hurt me… no more…'_

Ljubica tilted the ship over, flying around a pillar, starting to sing along as she avoided columns of red, sparkling energy.

"I'm not knowing… why you're not _there… _I'm giving you my love, and you're not caring…"

Kinzie frowned. "What the hell, you just have to copy the words they say, you can't be that stu-…"

"_Da_, is what I am _doing_, comrade," Ljubica retorted, swooping down low over a piece of the superstructure. "Be giving me sign…"

The hacker threw her hands up in disgust, but Keith just chuckled.

Ljubica rotated the ship onto it's side to slip through a narrow gap, righting it and heading into a wider tunnel. The vessel was heavy on the stick, and she furrowed her brow in concentration as she tried to find them a path to safety, forgetting about the music blaring through the speakers.

'_Don't hurt me… don't hurt me… no more.'_

"Ah, shit, she is having fat ass," Ljubica growled, the rear of the ship scraping as she fought the controls to pull up out of a dive.

"Do a barrel roll!" Kinzie barked.

"Spin this ship, dammit!" Keith added.

Ljubica chuckled darkly as they approached a rotating assembling, two squarish holes just big enough for the ship to pass through. She deftly spun the ship around on it's central axis in order to slip through, cheering as they shot out the other side as the ship righted.

"Asshole!" Kinzie grumbled.

Enemy craft appeared ahead, and Ljubica squeezed the trigger on her flight stick, the vessel's laser cannons opening up and turning the Zin into flaming heaps of plasma and scrap metal.

"They're closing us in!" Kinzie cried, pointing, as if the doors closing weren't obvious enough.

Ljubica rolled the ship onto it's side, gritting her teeth as she worked the controls. "Be staying on target…"

She wove through one, two, three sets of heavy doors, scraping the bottom of the ship on the last one, and then finally through a final one. Ahead of them was the blackness of space, and as they sped out of the Zin mothership, she sagged in the chair, trembling slightly from the adrenalin, but it felt good.

"Kinzie, be taking over, I am needing clothes," Ljubica told the other woman. Keith was already handing her a jumpsuit, and she only wondered for a moment why the Zin had clothing sized for human beings before putting it on, only zipping it up about three quarters of the way and pushing up the sleeves.

"We're not really leaving the others, are we?" Keith asked.

"Hell no," Ljubica growled, snapping her head to face him, anger in her purple eyes. "But if we are taking fight to Zinyak, we are needing all of help we can be getting, comrade."

Ljubica and her second in command walked over to Kinzie, where she was busy accelerating into an obit around earth.

"Kinzie, can you be getting in touch with Oleg?" Ljubica asked.

The hacker looked over head shoulder a moment. "Yeah, we should be in range."

Kinzie started the call, waited for almost a minute, and then shook her head.

"Voicemail!?" Ljubica spat, pacing.

"You want me to leave a message?"

Ljubica rolled her eyes. "Fine-…"

There was a bright flash outside the front of the ship, their vessel shuddering and rocking from a massive shockwave. The all lost their footing, falling to the deck, and Ljubica banged her head on a chair. When the reddish-orange glow faded away, the three of them looked on in horror.

"No!" Ljubica growled.

"Jesus!" Keith cried!

Kinzie only managed a faint "Oleg…"

The Earth had been reduced to a mass of tumbling, spinning chunks of rock and ash, completely obliterated by some kind of highly advanced weaponry. Kinzie was the first to speak again.

"It's all gone…" she said weakly, and all three subtly moved closer, perhaps in an instinctual reaction to what had just happened. They felt a need for closeness; they might be the last remaining humans.

Holographic displays all lit up, the Zin that had to be Zinyak appearing on them and looking smug. '_Well, I'd say this has been a productive day…'_

"You are fucking monster!" Ljubica snarled. She'd killed her fair share of innocent people, but this, this was something even she wasn't capable of.

'_Oh, don't act surprised,'_ Zinyak chided. '_I told you this would happen.'_

"You killed seven billion people," Keith accused in disbelief.

Zinyak didn't even care. '_Whoops…'_

Kinzie shut off the displays, voice still quiet, but with a growing edge of anger. "We're done talking."

Keith shook his head. "He's not getting away with this."

"You're _fucking_ right he is not," Ljubica growled viciously, barely constraining her fury, because Zinyak hadn't just killed seven billion people.

Her young daughter had been on the planet when it was destroyed.

"Kinzie," she hissed. "Can you be using this to be putting me back in simulation?"

"Yeah, I think I should be able to…"

"Be doing it," Ljubica ordered, marching towards the exit. She'd seen a room with upright beds that reminded her of that movie she saw back when she'd first come to the United States, and so she reasoned that's where she'd need to go to get back in.

"Wait, you want to go back in there?" Keith said to her heatedly, spinning her back around, and she almost hit him for stopping her. "You can't kill Zinyak plugged into a computer."

Ljubica turned to look at Kinzie, opening her mouth to say something, but the hacker interrupted her, calling over her shoulder. "I can kill a lot of people with a computer."

"You, sure," Keith said, pointing at the redhead, then pointing to Ljubica. "You need help setting the DVR."

Ljubica started walking away, she didn't have time for this. She had a plan, and it was time to put it into motion. "If taking over part of simulation was leading you to me, then taking over whole thing is having to be doing something good, comrade."

"You don't even know _what_ will happen," Keith argued, grabbing her shoulder, and Ljubica angrily shrugged him off.

"She probably does," Ljubica growled, motioning to Kinzie.

"The Tzaritsa is right," Kinzie said, walking over to a computer console as they entered the chamber with the beds, and Ljubica started strapping herself in to one. "Whenever the simulation is disrupted, I have a small window to work my way inside the Zin security network. The more it's disrupted, the more time I'll have to map out Zinyak's mothership."

The hacker went on, clearly in her element. "I can identify structural weakness, locate where they're keeping our friends…"

"And find Zinyak," Keith interrupted, and Kinzie nodded.

"Yeah."

"Let's be doing this," Ljubica growled dangerously, a tone that promised death, violence, and Kinzie and Keith both shut the restraint assemblies over her.

_When historians look back on the fall of the Zin Empire, this will be the defining moment. An act that was supposed to demoralize, galvanized; and a course was set that the Saints could never back down from._

_But even more monumental is this: if the Earth was not destroyed, pragmatism would have won over desperation, and the Saints would have never been reunited with the most dangerous man in all of history:_

_Johnny Gat._

_But ever as always, I'm getting ahead of myself… like all good stories, the second act begins with a call to action… and the building of a robot._


End file.
